


heart so soft it hurt to beat

by freefallvertigo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, First Kiss, Pining, References to Depression, and everyone gets one!!!, au in which everyone stops being dumb n talks about their feelings lol, post tcc, unintentional self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: “How is she?” Yaz whispers to the window.From nothing, a detached voice leans into her mind with an impossibly weightless weight.How are you?“That’s not an answer.”Unless the answers are the same.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 114





	heart so soft it hurt to beat

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally supposed to be a short hug fic/drabble which got away from me bc i'm sad and gay and i cant do anythin except project so! tl;dr someone take my keyboard from me thank u x
> 
> title from 'hurt' by arlo parks

There’s a crack in Yaz’s bedroom ceiling. 

It’s nothing special. It’s just a crack; fine as hair and a few inches long. She doesn’t remember how or when it happened. She thinks it might always have been there. It reaches from the point of one plastic, glow-in-the-dark star towards another. But the other is just out of reach. 

_ Why is that making me so sad?  _ Yaz asks herself, lying motionless on her bed and staring, as she has been doing for the past hour or so, at the splintered plaster. 

It occurs to her that she could move the second star. Let that reaching arm, that chasm between them, close around the comfort of another hand to hold. 

_ You can’t move the stars, Yaz. Can’t will them closer to you just because you’re scared of the dark.  _

Yaz thinks of the Doctor. She thinks of the galaxies behind her eyes, the universe in her laugh, the twin hearts that, when she imagines pressing her ear to them, beat down on Yaz with the disintegrating heat of a hundred million suns. 

She stops thinking of the Doctor.

_ Let’s not go there.  _

For the dozenth time that day, Yaz catches herself wishing that she could go home. But she is home, isn’t she? And if gloomy, drizzling Sheffield — if these four walls — isn’t home, then where is it? What is it? Maybe home is a thing that only exists for the unbelievably fortunate. Maybe it’s a state of mind Yaz hasn’t mastered yet. Maybe it’s a lie. 

_ I want to go home.  _

“Stop.”

_ I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to— _

Distantly, Yaz hears a disturbance in the familiar din of the streets below. The pattering rain, passing cars, and whispering wind all succumb to the wheezing, groaning song of something that can only be ancient. Can only be brand new. Something eternally strange and, all at once, the most familiar thing across all of time and space. 

Yaz scrambles out of bed as fast as her limbs will allow (which, granted, isn’t all that fast at the moment). She looks out her window and there it is.

Her paradox.

Whether she’s referring to the ship or its pilot, she doesn’t waste time mulling over. There’s a bigger issue at hand: the Doctor is a day early. Hastily yanking a hoodie over her T-shirt and tying her hair into a loose pony on her way out of her room, Yaz calls a quick goodbye and a promise to be back soon over her shoulder. She cuts clean through her mother’s next question with the eager slam of a door. 

Lacking the patience to wait for the lift, Yaz takes the stairs two at a time. Her feet pound the damp pavement when she rushes across the street. The old blue box, all weathered wood and peculiarity, is parked on her usual corner. And, as usual, her door clicks softly open for Yaz upon approach. 

The instant she presses her palm to the grain, Yaz slows. Frowns. She can’t be sure, but she thinks she feels something at her fingertips. The grooves in the door are pulsing against her nerves; greeting her touch with a feeling that swathes her from head to toe. It’s cold and unpleasant. It hurts. 

Initially, she mistakes the sensation as her own ache. But, no. There’s something foreign about this pain.

Something alien. 

“How is she?” Yaz whispers to the window. 

From nothing, a detached voice leans into her mind with an impossibly weightless weight.  _ How are you?  _

“That’s not an answer.”

_ Unless the answers are the same. _

Gritting her teeth, Yaz pushes the door open and steps across the threshold. Her hand slips from the wood and the suffocating burden of two separate hurts eases by half. Or perhaps a little more. She rolls her shoulders, shaking off the remnants that stick. Some are more stubborn than others. 

Ice blue and warm orange envelop Yaz in a warring cacophony of colour. As ever, the crown of crystal columns, glowing amber as a twilight sky, inspires nothing less than total awe. But the panels in the wall shine cold. 

Before the gleaming time rotor stands the Doctor. She has her back to Yaz. Her shoulders are hunched, head ducked to her chest; palms digging into the hard edge of the console. Yaz doesn’t creep, and yet her advance goes unheard. Or unacknowledged. It isn’t until Yaz is standing directly behind her, isn’t until she clears her throat with intent, that the Doctor starts with an exclamation of surprise and careens back into her body. 

With a flair of her coat, she swivels on the spot. For less than an instant, Yaz is certain she sees something resembling weariness, something like fear or defeat or even  _ anger _ , clinging to the creases in her face. But then her eyes land on Yaz, and she grins. 

“Hiya, Yaz!” the Doctor welcomes — in such a cheery register that it’s hard not to be convinced that Yaz fabricated the Doctor’s telling slip of the mask all by herself. “How long y’been standin’ there for? Don’t half like to sneak up on me, you lot. Really ought to consider puttin’ bells on you. Gonna give me a heart attack, one of these days.”

“Good thing you’ve got a spare,” Yaz ribs, but her tone falls flat. Jokes are tricky these days. “How come you’re here early? Did you get the times wrong again?”

“Oh, um…” The Doctor turns around and toggles with a few switches, shrugging her shoulders in an effort at nonchalance. “No. no. I didn’t get the times wrong. Don’t think so. Wait, what year is this?” She swings her monitor round, squints at it, and nods her head. “Nope! Defo didn’t get the times wrong.”

“Then…”

The Doctor’s skittish eyes won’t endure Yaz for longer than a few seconds at a time. “Just — I dunno. I must’ve been on autopilot. Started thinkin’ about comin’ to see you and, next thing I know, here I am.”

The words are a blow to Yaz’s nameless miseries, which tremble — but don’t give — upon impact. “I were just thinkin’ about you, too,” she dares to confess. The Doctor’s hand stills at a lever. Yaz takes a step closer. It’d be so easy, she remarks, to close the gaps between them, wrap her arms around her; ask her not to pry but just to hold. To be, and be in Yaz’s embrace. 

Unseen at the Doctor’s back, Yaz reaches. One lonely star reaching for another across the infinite black. 

The Doctor steps away. “Ah, well, how’s that for serendipity?” she muses, dispensing a custard cream, shoving it into her mouth, and putting several more paces between herself and Yaz. When she turns, Yaz’s hand has fallen limp at her side. 

_ You can’t move the stars.  _

Yaz remembers a fact she heard once, about how the universe is always expanding; the stars and worlds and galaxies get a little further away with every second that passes. Here, now, she feels that amassing distance (the vacuum, the vacancy, the nothing in between) take up residence inside of her. And it just keeps expanding. She doesn’t think her body is big enough to contain it. How long until it breaks her?

How long until she falls apart? 

“Was something wrong?” Yaz wonders. Her fingers still tremble with the ghost of the TARDIS’ harrowing impression. 

“Wrong? With me? Never,” denies the Doctor. “Right as rain, me.”

It’s a lie. It has to be. 

Ever since the Doctor’s return from prison and all the events preceding it, a tangible off-ness has inhabited her. She’s always been quick on her feet, but now she’s just a blur. Never stops. Never slows down. Never, ever alone. 

Yaz discovered, entirely by accident, the Doctor’s tendency to hop straight from drop-off day, in which her companions depart to return to reality, to pick-up day. It was a few weeks ago. Graham and Ryan had already bid their goodbyes and headed out. Yaz, having forgotten something, ran back to her room to retrieve it. The Doctor didn’t notice. When she returned to the console room a minute later, Graham and Ryan walked in with mystified expressions on their faces and a claim that none had heard hide nor hair from her for a week. That had been a treat to explain to her family. 

The Doctor dismissed it as an easy mistake. 

“Just thought y‘might fancy a little trip, is all,” the Doctor continues. Biscuit crumbs dust the soft pink of her lower lip. Before Yaz can get any ideas about brushing them off, the tip of the Doctor’s tongue darts out to claim them and she smacks her lips with a hum. “Unless I’m interruptin’? You lot, you’re always doin’ taxes and havin’ birthdays and… drivin’ around in your little cars.”

“You’re not interrupting much, believe me,” mutters Yaz. 

“Excellent!” The Doctor claps her hands together and skips animatedly around the console, gearing up for lift off. “What d’you fancy then? Sunset over the diamond canyon? Brunch at an asteroid diner? They have  _ killer _ waffles! Seriously. Might wanna avoid them. Ooh, I know—“

“Actually,” Yaz interrupts, eyes on her shoes, “since you’re here, I — maybe we could just — d’you reckon we could just hang out today? On the TARDIS?”

The Doctor’s dance grinds to a halt. Head tilted, she peels away from the crank her hands were affixed to and nears Yaz. “What’s the matter? Not feelin’ well? Whatever it is, I’ve probably got somethin’ for it. And if I don’t, I’ll just invent it.”

“I’m not sick.”

_ Aren’t you? _

“Well, no harm in bein’ sure.” The Doctor pulls a stethoscope from her coat pocket. She slots the earpieces in and holds the drum to Yaz’s chest. 

“Doctor,” sighs Yaz.

“You’re usually the first one up for an adventure. Must be somethin’ the matter. Take a deep breath for me?”

Grinding her jaw, Yaz does as instructed. She thinks she’s doing pretty well at reining in her heart, until the Doctor’s hand skirts up her top and she presses the cool metal flat against her skin. The reins snap. Her heart runs free. 

Brows drawing together, the Doctor stares intently at Yaz’s chest; listens intently to the slam of her heart. “Yaz, your heart’s racing.”

“Look, I’m fine!” Yaz pushes the Doctor’s hand away and steps back. 

The Doctor regards Yaz with a measure of confusion, slowly plucking the stethoscope from her ears and studying the embarrassment on her face as though it’s a set of instructions written in a language she doesn’t understand. “Are you?”

“I’m fine just like you’re fine, right?” challenges Yaz. It’s bait she hopes the Doctor will take. It’s a desperate hand still outstretched. If only the Doctor would inch a little closer. 

Instead, she pockets the stethoscope with a hardly perceptible nod. “Right.”

Yaz wants to cry.

_ You can’t move the stars.  _

“Well, if it’s not adventure you’re after, I’ve a few odd bits to do around the TARDIS,” shrugs the Doctor. “Could always use an extra pair of hands.”

“Okay,” says Yaz, because — where the Doctor is concerned — she’ll take close even if close isn’t close enough. 

Yaz shadows the Doctor on her rounds aboard the ship. She doesn’t help much, only passes the Doctor the appropriate tools upon request and offers the quiet solace of her company. Talk is sparse. The two of them are worlds away. When the Doctor does speak, it’s mostly inane chatter about the complex mechanics of the TARDIS that Yaz comprehends roughly ten percent of and can offer no substantial replies to. 

Time passes. Minutes. Hours. Longer. Who can say? It’s an abstract concept on a time machine. They’re in the boiler room — a vast metal hangar stuffy with steam and dimly lit with low, red lights — when Yaz makes a grievous error. At least, it begins as an error. 

She’s distracted when it happens. The heaviness she’s been lugging around all day has become increasingly unbearable now that she no longer has just her own to shoulder. Goggles pulled over her eyes, the Doctor is on her back beneath a vast metal tank and Yaz is standing over her outstretched legs. She’s a spare part and she knows it, but she thinks the Doctor appreciates her being there. She hopes. 

“All right, that oughta do it!” the Doctor announces from beneath the cylinder. “Yaz, how hot’s it runnin’? Can you check?”

If Yaz hadn’t been so immersed in black clouds and melancholy, she might’ve heard the Doctor’s prior warnings not to touch the tanks under any circumstance; might’ve heard her explain that there was a small gauge on the side for reading the temperature. She might even have noticed the sign, in bold red letters, attached to the pipes. Alas.

Yaz presses her hand to the metal. 

The pain is instantaneous. She feels it like a blue-hot flame licking at her palm. She feels it like lava scorching her skin. She feels—

She feels. 

Yaz is feeling something. It’s excruciating, and it’s everywhere, and there’s no room left over for anything else save the way her skin singes and sizzles and screams. 

_ You can’t move the stars, but you can still burn.  _

“What’s takin’ so long?” The Doctor asks, rolling out from beneath the tank. “The gauge is — Yaz?” Her face blanches.  _ ‘Yaz _ !” Springing to her feet, the Doctor seizes Yaz by her shoulders and tears her away. But the pain lingers. As does the bad smell in the air. What’s cooking?

_ Oh. Me. _

Frantic, the Doctor grabs Yaz’s wrist and examines the damage. It’s angry, red, blistering. Her alarmed eyes find Yaz’s. She looks like she’s about to explode, or ask a million questions, or ask if she’s okay ( _ ask me. Please _ ). In the end, her face sets like cement and she purses her lips. “With me. Quickly.”

Hand on Yaz’s back, the Doctor rushes her, through winding tunnels and along endless corridors, towards the med bay. It’s a high-ceilinged white room cluttered with alien equipment, sterile cots, cabinets, and a large sink to one end. 

Yaz lets herself be hurried towards the sink. The Doctor runs the tap and pulls her injured hand under it. The moment the water hits her skin, Yaz cries out for the first time. The Doctor is muttering something under her breath but all Yaz knows is pain. Pain, and the Doctor’s hand on her hand. She struggles with which to prioritise. 

_ We should do this again sometime. _

“Okay, sit down,” instructs the Doctor, turning off the faucet and leading Yaz towards one of the cots. Yaz perches on the edge and waits silently for the Doctor to finish rummaging around in the cabinets. When she returns, there’s a tube of cream in her hands. “Works wonders, this stuff. Traded a pair of anti-gravity boots for it. Heal you right up in no time.”

This time, when the Doctor sits down beside Yaz and picks up her hand, she is far more careful. She’s more tender than Yaz knew she had it in her to be. The cream is cold. Yaz’s hand protests but she bites down on her lip to keep from making known her strife, though the tears pricking her eyes are a dead giveaway regardless. Once she’s gently lathered the whole burn in cream, taking intermittent breaks to allow Yaz a respite, the Doctor screws the cap onto the tube and leans back. 

Unable to meet her anatomising gaze, Yaz stares at her palm. Already, the anaesthetics in the ointment are taking effect. Yaz feels guilty for mourning the loss of her acute agony. Only, once it’s gone, the agony it leaves the door open for is far worse. 

“A watched hand never heals,” quips the Doctor. When Yaz says nothing, she exhales softly. “Would you please look at me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I think I might start crying if I look at you right now.”

The Doctor’s eyes widen. Her concern rolls off her in waves and it’s a high tide from beneath which Yaz struggles to come up for air. “Yaz, have I done somethin’ to upset you? Know what I’m like. Foot in mouth disease. I’m really sorry if I said the wrong thing or—“

“But you haven’t, Doctor. You haven’t said anything. For months.” Finally, Yaz lifts her head. The Doctor looks startled at the intensity emblazoned onto her features. “Is this what it takes?”

“What do you mean?”

“For you to wanna have an actual conversation,” elucidates Yaz. She holds up her mutilated hand. “Is this what it takes?”

The Doctor looks only at Yaz’s hand for a time. “Is that why you did it? So I’d talk to you?” she eventually breathes, as though she’s afraid to hear the answer. 

Shoulders sagging, Yaz shakes her head. “No. I don’t even know why I did it. Didn’t mean to, at first. But then…” she trails off with a frustrated scoff. “I don’t even know how to explain it.”

“Try,” encourages the Doctor. “I’ll do my best to understand.”

“It’s like — I dunno, it’s like sometimes I just disappear. Physically, I’m here. I’m going through the motions, I can hear myself talking, feel my muscles moving, but I’ve gone somewhere. And this place I go to, it’s so fucking lonely. It just feels like nothing. I’m so sick of feeling  _ nothing _ ,” laments Yaz, angry eyes fixed on the floor. She blinks her tears away. “But it’s worse, ‘cause I don’t think I’m the only person who goes to that place. Sometimes I look at you and I just know you’re right there with me. But you never see me, Doctor. Not like I see you.”

A freighted silence follows Yaz’s confession. Civilisations rise and fall in the time it takes the Doctor to find her voice. 

“I see you everywhere I turn, Yaz,” she mumbles at last. Yaz dares to face her and something in the Doctor’s glossy, hazel-golds wrenches the breath from her lungs. “I’m sorry that I’m no good at puttin’ that across. I do try. Promise. Everywhere we’ve been lately, I chose all those places for you. I know when I left it hit you the hardest. I know you haven’t been the same since. Thought if I just showed you the right view, took you to watch the right sunset or gaze at the right constellations or dance to the right music, then maybe you’d understand.”

Yaz’s lip trembles when she asks, “Understand what?”

“I guess it were my way of tryna say I see that you’re alone and I know how much it hurts.” The Doctor fidgets with her hands and casts her eyes down. “That I know I’ve been distant, and I’m sorry, but I’m still there for you. Whenever you need me to be. I’m not much of a wordsmith these days, Yaz. I find it hard to talk about  _ my _ sadness,  _ my _ rage;  _ my _ lonely place. But that doesn’t have to be the case for you. The last thing I want is…” She eyes Yaz’s hand and her voice breaks. “The last thing I want is for you to hurt yourself ‘cause you think no one’s got you.”

A solitary tear tracks the soft flesh of Yaz’s cheek. The Doctor wipes it away with her thumb and rests their foreheads together with eyes closed and a hand at the back of Yaz’s neck. “I’ve got you, Yaz.”

“How…” Yaz struggles to speak around the solid lump in her throat, but she has to get this out — easy as it would be to let the Doctor’s assurances soak into her bloodstream like morphine. She peels away from her, that their proximity might not smother her intentions. “How can you have me, when you won’t even let me in? How can I trust you to look after me if you don’t look after yourself? It doesn’t work like that, Doctor. It goes both ways.”

“But…”

Yaz slides off the cot. Drying her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie, she turns away. Reckons it’s time to leave. She’s got a date with the crack in her ceiling. Maybe it’s time to fill it in. Maybe the roof will cave in on her head. Whichever comes first. 

A firm hand closes around her elbow. Yaz looks back to find the Doctor standing behind her, and she looks terrified. But of what? The hand at her elbow slips down her forearm, past her wrist, and nestles into her palm — where it settles. It’s cool and it’s solid and it’s a little bit rough and Yaz never wants to hold another hand for as long as she lives. 

“Can’t do it, Yaz,” quivers the Doctor. She squeezes Yaz’s hand. Their outstretched arms are pulled taut in the space between them. “Can’t let you go.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“What about me?” 

Yaz falters. She’s never seen the Doctor like this before: all trembling bones, crocodile tears welling in those big, sad eyes, and her unabashed desperation coming off her like a solar flare. A tendril of starlight, travelling across the black towards her. 

“Okay, Yaz,” the Doctor relents. “Okay. You want more. You want me to be open. Honest. Vulnerable.”

Yaz can only nod. The Doctor tugs her so close she can see the way her brows are wavering and the muscles in her throat constrict around a hard swallow. The black hole of a universe inside of Yaz shrinks just a little; the splintering pressure behind her ribs lessens. 

“The truth is, you’re right. I’m barely holdin’ it together myself,” the Doctor admits in a strained whisper. “And the truth is, I only try for you. I know that’s an awful thing to say. I know you never asked for that. But you wanted real. That’s real. The way it hurts to be around you, and to see how you’re strugglin’ because I’m too much of a coward to offer more of myself, that’s real. And the realest thing that I can think to tell you right now is that I am afraid. Constantly. Of everything. But nothin’ in the universe scares me more than the idea of losin’ you, Yasmin Khan.”

The starlight she’s been seeking coils around Yaz’s vital organs and constricts. Her heart turns to dust inside her; she tastes it on her tongue when she next speaks. “Well,” she croaks. “How hard was that?”

The Doctor chokes a laugh and Yaz offers a watery smile back. And they’re looking at each other. They’re looking and they’re looking until they aren’t any more. Because then their eyes are closing, and their hands are cradling one another’s faces, and they’re kissing. The Doctor is kissing Yaz. 

That’s real. 

She kisses her hard enough to breathe a second heart into her to make up for the one she broke. And it’s brand new, this thing. It’s brand new and it’s precious and it doesn’t yet know to ache, but the Doctor has her both her hands around it as though she’s shielding a feeble flame and Yaz trusts her. She trusts that the Doctor will keep it safe. It’s hers too, after all. For now and evermore. 

The kiss ends with noses nestled side by side and the uncertainty of tomorrow dancing in the air around them. They pay it no mind. 

Yaz throws her arms around the Doctor like she’s longed to do for days, months, years untold. The Doctor laughs when she hugs her back. They hold fast to one another as if letting go would kill them and, who knows, perhaps it would. Tangled up in the Doctor’s sure embrace and breathing in the smoky, earthy scent of her, something at last slots into place for Yaz. 

_ You can’t move the stars.  _

No, but the Doctor isn’t a star. All that burns is her loneliness. All that shines are her tears. Yaz might not be able to move them, but she can follow their half-light until she finds her way home. 

_ The Doctor is home.  _

The Doctor is home.

**Author's Note:**

> i do apologise if u were expecting smth better this was rushed and unedited and i was losing my mind by the end i'm so sorry x
> 
> find me on tumblr: freefallthirteen


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